And why Jon Meachem is justifiably facing my ire this morning then look at this.
Look no further than Newsweek’s cover this week by geographical region:
A cover story about Annie Leibovitz. Nothing personal against her, but JEEBUS!!
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Oil Immunity?
Government denies charges that Bush helped oil companies in Iraq
WASHINGTON, October 30, 2003 — On May 22, the U.N. Security Council gathered in New York to approve a resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq, creating a Development Fund for the country and providing limited immunity to corporations involved in oil and gas deals there for the next four years. The resolution directed that proceeds from future sales of Iraqi oil and gas be placed in the development fund and allowed the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to disburse the funds in consultation with the interim Iraqi administration.
That same day at the White House, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13303, which appears to give immunity from any judicial process to every entity with direct or indirect interests in Iraqi petroleum and related products. “The threat of attachment or judicial process against the Development Fund for Iraq, Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein … constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” reads the executive order. It continues, “… any … judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void.”
Executive Order 13303 went unnoticed outside the government until July, when it was spotted by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank.
Since then, accusations have been flying over whether or not the Bush administration has given blanket immunity to the oil industry in Iraq. “The Executive Order is a blank check for corporate anarchy,” Tom Devine, legal director of the non-profit Government Accountability Project, wrote in a July 2003 assessment of the order for the Institute. “Its sweeping, unqualified language places industry above domestic and international law for anything related to commerce in Iraqi oil.”
“Translated from the legalese, this is a license for corporations to loot Iraq and its citizens,” Devine added.
The U.S. Treasury Department argues that Bush’s executive order simply protects the Iraqi people and the oil funds expected to be used to rebuild the country.
Taylor Griffin, a Treasury spokesman, told the Center for Public Integrity that because of Iraq’s foreign debt —estimates, which do not include compensation to Kuwait for the first Gulf War, vary between $100 billion and $130 billion—the administration did not want any loopholes that would allow people to sue Iraq. Bush’s executive order was necessary for the country to avoid long legal struggles, such as those between the Philippine government and former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos over funds in Swiss banks, he added.
“The executive order only protects revenue from the Development Fund for Iraq. We knew we were going to issue regulations … and we had to be broad,” Griffin said. “The Iraqi people need that money,” Griffin continued. “We wrote it broad to protect all of the money.”
Administration officials said critics’ concerns about such issues as blanket immunity for oil spills will be addressed in the Treasury Department’s regulations on how to implement Executive Order 13303 through its Office of Foreign Assets Control. Griffin said the regulations were being drafted, but he could give no timetable on when they would be ready.
Where U.N. Resolution 1483 provides immunity only until the first point of sale, Executive Order 13303 appears to give immunity from extraction to payment of taxes, according to some advocacy groups and legal experts. There is no time frame in the order. In the case of an oil spill, Resolution 1483 does not protect from a lawsuit, while Section 1 of the executive order states that any “judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void.” According to Devine, this removes any enforcement for civil and criminal liability with respect to protected activities covered by the executive order.
“EO 13303 waives the entire system of administrative law under Federal Acquisitions Regulations for government contracts,” Devine wrote in his critique of the order. “It cancels liability for civil fraud in government contracts under the False Claims Act … the nation’s most effective anti-fraud statute. In short, the EO is a blank check for pork barrel spending.”
Advocacy groups say the administration needs to change the language of the executive order if it has other intentions. “This executive order can only be read to cancel the rule of law for the oil industry,” Devine said in August. Jamin Raskin, a constitutional law professor at American University, echoed Devine’s concerns in comments to the Los Angeles Times, saying the language “seems to destroy the prospect of any enforcement of civil or criminal liability.” He suggested the executive order may go the way of the administration’s military tribunals, which were sharply refined by regulation after public protest.
—André Verlöy
I see that TIME’s in-house faux liberal is at it again, this time giving Hugh Hewitt a private lap dance instead of dancing around the pole for everyone to see:
HH: I just have never seen them on PBS. But nevertheless, Joe, what I want to talk about is reverse Turnip Days, moments where candidates were not candid, and I think it hurt them. I want to start with an episode I find odd not finding it here in Politics Lost, which is the Florida recount, and the disastrous attempt by Gore and Lieberman to throw out the ballots of the military. Was that not the sort of authentic moment where we saw the soul of the modern Democratic Party on display?
JK: I think that the Florida recount in general…well, first of all, you’re right about that. I mean, too often, the default position, especially in the left wing of the Democratic Party, is to not respect the military sufficiently, and to assume that anytime the United States would use force overseas, we would be wrong
.
And people wonder why liberals are popularly perceived as being cowards.
Here we have alleged liberal Joe Klein being confronted by alleged human Hugh Hewitt with a comment that the Democratic Party’s [black]”soul” was on display when it argued that illegal ballots cast after election day shouldn’t be counted (for good reason, as it turned out.) Does Joe Klein argue that the the Republicans staged fake uprisings and attempted to get the Cuban community to rise up (among many other things) thus showing that using the Florida debacle as an illustration of the “soul” of a party wasn’t really a smart thing to do? No. Does he point out that the Republican party has a funny way of showing its “soul” when it supports torture? No. Does he laugh in Hugh Hewitt’s supercilious face? Of course not.
He agrees with Hewitt. Indeed, this line is his foremost Scotty McClellanesque robotic talking point lately, called into use no matter what the question about the Democrats, whether it’s about “soul” or nuclear war. Is there anyone in DC who can deprogram this guy? Or, at least officially relabel him a conservative so he an no longer be used as a liberal or “left of center” counterbalance on talking heads shows? Then he’ll be able to officially join the right wing noise machine and he can take Hewie to the Conservative Prom.
Here are some highlights of Joe’s bumps and grinds. It’s true that he teases poor Hewie with some feints toward Democrats by saying the Swift boaters were wrong and a few other things, but he always comes back with a big gyrating bounce right where it counts:
JK: No, no. Hugh, in the past year, I’ve stood for the following things. I’ve taken the following positions. I agreed with the President on social security reform. I supported his two Supreme Court nominees, and I support, even though I opposed this war, I support staying the course in Iraq, and doing whatever we have to do in order to stabilize the region.
HH: All right. There are two critical aspects…
JK: So where do you put me on the spectrum?
HH: I’m going to put you as an old liberal with some hope of coming around.
JK: You know, I keep on getting hammered by the left.
HH: Oh, I know, but they’re crazy now, Joe, as you write in this book. That’s what’s so wonderful about it. Your descriptions of the Democratic Party made me chuckle. It’s lost. It’s off the cliff.
JK: It made me cry.
[…]
JK: Well, you know, I also run in the kind of faith based circle. In fact, one of Bush’s nicknames for me is Mr. Faith Based.
HH: Well, that’s good.
JK: And at the very end of the book, I acknowledge Bill Bennett as giving the best advice on how to judge a presidential candidate.
HH: At a Christian Coalition meeting. Yeah, it’s a great anecdote.
JK: And Bill’s a good friend of mine. But I’ve kind of got to give these guys cover. You don’t want to be praised by what you call a traditional liberal, do you?
[…]
JK: But can I just say this about the President? You were saying this before the break. Let me say that of all the major politicians I’ve covered in presidential politics in the last two or three times around, he is the most likely to stick with an issue, even if the polls are bad, and to govern from the gut as you said. I don’t always agree with the decisions that he makes, but I think he is an honorable man, and when I’ve criticized him, I’ve tried to criticize him on the substance, and certainly not on his personality, because I really like the guy.
[…]
HH: When Michael Moore shows up in Jimmy Carter’s box, the presidential box…
JK: Disgraceful!
HH: Disgraceful?
JK: Utterly disgraceful. I mean, one of the problems that I have with being called a liberal by someone like you is that there are all these people on the left in the Democratic Party who are claiming to be liberals, and I don’t want to be associated with them.
HH: And Michael Moore is one of them?
JK: Oh, yeah. I mean, Michael Moore is reprehensible.
HH: How about when Al Gore shouted he betrayed us, he betrayed us? Was that reverse turnip time?
JK: Yeah, I thought that was pretty terrible. I mean, I think that Democrats have gotten so frustrated by their inability to win elections, that they’re beginning to get pretty harsh and stupid.
HH: What’s going on at the Daily Kos, and at Atrios, and these left wing bloggers? Do you read them?
JK: Only when they attack me, which is just about every day.
HH: Yes, they do. So what’s happened…
JK: You know, last Sunday on Stephanopoulos, I said that we can’t keep…that we have to keep the nuclear option on the table when dealing with Iran, if for no other reason than to make them worry a little bit, that we might be so crazy as to use it. That gets translated the next day by a number of left wing bloggers into me supporting a nuclear attack on Iran.
HH: Well, doesn’t the Democratic Party have to distance itself from this fever swamp?
JK: Well, I think the Democratic Party has to, and I think the Republican Party has to distance itself from Creationists, and extremists on their side. You know, I was up with Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire last week, and someone asked him about intelligent design. And he said I think it’s a perfectly fine philosophy, it just shouldn’t be taught in science classes, because it has nothing to do with science. And those are the kind of politicians…I’ve always really respected Newt, because he’s a man of honor, and he is a real policy wonk, and he really cares about stuff.
HH: We’re out of time. Joe, will you come back when you’re done with the hectic of the book tour?
JK: Sure.
HH: Because I would love to continue this on. In fact, as often as you want, you’ve got the open invitation to be our responsible Democrat on the show, because they’re hard to find.
Joe loves you too big guy. You know just what to say to guy like him.
For the record, I can’t speak for everyone in the left blogosphere, but I can say that I criticized Klein’s comment about leaving nuclear war on the table as being insane because you don’t want pre-emptive war (especially nuclear)on the table, not because I thought he actually wanted nuclear war. I think the first is stupid and insane, and the second is stupid, insane and evil. Klein wants it known that he is only stupid and insane and I’m happy to grant him that. Evil would require some actual substance.
Update: And, btw, he goes out of his way to support, of all things, gun control, which has pretty much been jettisoned by the Democratic Party. I’m beginning to think he’s a paid agent of Richard Mellon Scaife. Everything he says, whether in “favor” of Democrats or against them is Karl Rove’s dream.
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digby 4/21/2006 09:31:00 AM LinktoComments(‘114564191293256631’) Comments (90) | postCountTB(‘114564191293256631’); Trackback (0)
[Update added at the end.]
In connection with several critical issues, I have recently been discussing one overall theme. I will put it in bold letters all by itself, so that I’m clear with regard to what I’m talking about here:
When you argue within the framework and using the terms selected by your opponent, you will always lose in the end. Even if you make a stronger case about one particular issue, your opponent still wins the larger battle — because you have permitted the underlying assumptions and the general perspective to remain unchallenged.
Here are recent examples I’ve analyzed in detail:
One: The war in Iraq has been “bungled” and executed “incompetently.” It remains a matter of considerable astonishment to me that even very strong opponents of the invasion and occupation of Iraq still make the argument in this form. This entirely avoids the fundamental and most critical point: Iraq was no threat to us, and our leaders knew it. Therefore, the war and invasion were and are immoral and absolutely unjustified.
I repeat: the entire war and occupation are immoral. If you criticize the Bush administration on the grounds that it “bungled” the war, this leaves one, and only one, inevitable implication: if they had prosecuted the war and occupation “competently,” then you would have no complaints whatsoever. That is: you think the invasion and occupation of Iraq were justified and moral. If that’s what you actually think, you belong in the Bush camp. You’re arguing over managerial style, and about issues that are entirely trivial.
Be clear on the ultimate result: you’ve given the game away completely, because you leave the moral argument for the war entirely in the hands of Bush and his supporters. They could not ask for more because, in the end, the moral agument is the most important one. [I have made this point before: “The worst criticism to be offered about the catastrophe in Iraq by most members of the political establishment is that it was handled ‘incompetently.’ They are unable to say that our invasion of Iraq was immoral at the core, because they refuse to surrender the belief that we act for the ‘right reasons’ and on behalf of history’s ‘ultimate solution,’ which only we have. We may execute the plan remarkably poorly, but it can never be doubted that we had ‘good intentions.'”]
My position is the exact opposite: since the war and occupation are entirely immoral, the results would be infinitely worse if they had prosecuted this fatal error “competently.” I suppose proponents of the “competence” argument mean that we would have put more troops in place immediately, that security would thereby have been significantly improved, and the like. That’s a lovely fantasy for some perhaps, but that’s all it is. It’s a fairy tale because it ignores the history and culture of Iraq itself — which, I remind you, was a fabricated country dreamed up in London after World War I, by British government personnel who for the most part knew nothing whatsoever about the region they so heedlessly rearranged.
Moreover, the British tried the “competence” route for years after World War I, and it failed completely. After a great deal of bloodshed and mayhem, they finally left — and nothing remotely approaching a Western “democracy” had been established. But if they had succeeded, and if we were to “succeed” in that manner today, we would have an example of the British Empire at its most “efficient”: a puppet government in thrall to the U.S., under our control in all the ways that matter, and doing our bidding entirely. Is this what people mean by “competence” and “success”? If so, stop talking about “freedom” and “democracy.” Talk about the glories of Empire, and be done with it. (I ruefully note that just such a puppet government is likely to be what we end up with in any case, but probably after much more mayhem and death than occurred during the British episode.)
Better yet, reject that paradigm altogether, and use a much more accurate one. The war and occupation were and are completely wrong, and nothing will ever make them right. End of story.
Two: It’s important to “get the intelligence right” the next time. I’ve discussed this at length — here (about Seymour Hersh’s latest Iran article), and here (about the irrelevance of intelligence), in particular. See this entry, too, for an especially valuable excerpt from Gabriel Kolko on this subject (“The function of intelligence anywhere is far less to encourage rational behavior–although sometimes that occurs–than to justify a nation’s illusions, and it is the false expectations that conventional wisdom encourages that make wars more likely, a pattern that has only increased since the early twentieth century.”).
Once again, I put the major point in bold letters all by itself:
Intelligence is completely irrelevant to major policy decisions. Such decisions are matters of judgment, and knowledgeable, ordinary citizens are just as capable of making these determinations as political leaders allegedly in possession of “secret information.” Such “secret information” is almost always wrong — and major decisions, including those pertaining to war and peace, are made entirely apart from such information in any case.
The second you start arguing about intelligence, you’ve given the game away once again. This is a game the government and the proponents of war will always win. By now, we all surely know that if they want the intelligence to show that Country X is a “grave” and “growing” threat, they will find it or manufacture it. So once you’re debating what the intelligence shows or fails to show, the debate is over. The war will inevitably begin. This is the point I’ve made with regard to Iran repeatedly. The administration’s plans are entirely clear: they intend to attack Iran. The only questions are when, and what the specific “excuse” will be.
That’s why I again explained my vehement, unqualified opposition to an attack on Iran in the current circumstances — and see this earlier essay for the longer argument. Just as I don’t care whether Iraq had WMD or not, I don’t care whether Iran has nuclear weapons or not — not with regard to the decision to launch an attack. Even if Iran should have nuclear weapons — and again, even if they are actually pursuing them, they will not have them for five to ten years or longer — that is not a sufficient reason to go to war. Moreover, the consequences of an attack on Iran will certainly be devastating, and perhaps catastrophic — and not least for our own security and safety.
To repeat: the decision to go to war is one of policy, and the intelligence — whatever it is alleged to show — is irrelevant. Don’t argue in terms of intelligence at all. If you do, you’ll lose. The administration knows that; many of its opponents still haven’t figured it out, even now.
Three: The press will always transmit and amplify government propaganda, and this is especially true with regard to war propaganda. This is so axiomatic that I admit it is quite beyond me how anyone could even question it. The execrable performance of the New York Times and Judith Miller, as well as that of the rest of the mainstream media, in the runup to the invasion of Iraq is now very well-known, and it has been documented in painful detail. But as I had occasion to point out some months ago, the sins of the Times during that period included much more than the dutiful propagandistic stenography of Miller. And as that same post discusses, the Times has already fallen for the administration’s propaganda about the supposed threat that Iran represents in toto. If the Times has since recanted its view that “Iran has a nuclear weapons program…” — which the Times offered as an absolutely uncontested fact last October — it has done so in a manner that escaped my notice entirely and, I suspect, everyone else’s. In fact, I’m certain the Times’ view on this question hasn’t altered a bit.
The reason I’m reviewing these issues once again is the following. Frank Rich is very often an unusually perceptive and accurate commentator. But for two Sundays in a row, he has fallen into the first and third of the traps described just above. I’m sure he’s fallen into the “intelligence” trap as well, but he hasn’t discussed that issue recently. If anyone has an example of Rich getting that one wrong too, please let me know.
I suppose it’s only to be expected that Rich feels a certain degree of loyalty to his employer, and to the press in general. But given the recent overall performance of the mainstream media and its subservience to those in power, the following passage is staggering in its credulousness. In discussing the ultimate goal of the administration’s concerted attack on the NYT and the ludicrously dishonest charge that the Times is guilty of treason, Rich writes:
The administration has a more insidious game plan instead: it has manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year. There are momentous stories far more worrisome to the White House than the less-than-shocking Swift program, whether in the chaos of Anbar Province or the ruins of New Orleans. If the press muzzles itself, its under-the-radar self-censorship will be far more valuable than a Nixonesque frontal assault that ends up as a 24/7 hurricane veering toward the Supreme Court.Will this plan work? It did after 9/11.
As my earlier post about how the Times has already swallowed the administration line about Iran indicates, Rich is some months late, and this ship sailed a long, long time ago. As Rich himself points out in more detail in his column, the Swift story was considerably less than news. It was hardly the Pentagon Papers Redux. In fact, it took very little courage to publish the story at all, unless you regard standing up to the administration’s cheap bullying as notably courageous. The fact that the administration lobbied the Times as hard as it did to prevent publication had nothing to do with alleged damage to “national security,” and everything to do with the Bush gang’s preference for committing its numerous crimes in very dark corners, and in a manner completely unknown to the public. The overreaching and utterly unjustified attacks on the Times have been so successful only because of the huge megaphones held by numerous rightwing propagandists and their enablers in the press — and because of the press’s own long-standing cowardice, even and perhaps especially in its own defense.
Our press has muzzled itself for many years, and it already engages in massive self-censorship. “Will this plan work?” Rich wonders. It already has worked and it continues to work now, many times over.
Later in his column, Rich commits the first error noted above:
Now more than ever, after years of false reports of missions accomplished, the voters need to do what Congress has failed to do and hold those who mismanage America’s ever-expanding war accountable for their performance in real time.
In last week’s column, Rich made the same mistake even more obviously:
[Frist] and his party, eager to change the subject in an election year, just can’t let go of their scapegoat strategy. It’s illegal Hispanic immigrants, gay couples seeking marital rights, cut-and-run Democrats and rampaging flag burners who have betrayed America’s values, not those who bungled a war.
Ah, if only they hadn’t “bungled” that war! Then the glories of Empire would have been ours!
The prevailing framework is so insidious precisely because it is so pervasive. It is the cultural atmosphere we all swim in; these are the terms that everyone uses all the time. But if you oppose the administration’s policies, you use them at your great peril.
To recap:
Don’t ever talk about a war and occupation that were “bungled” or that were run “incompetently.” The war and occupation were fundamentally immoral. They were and are entirely unjustified. If you argue on their terms, you grant their major premise: that the war was moral and right. Game to the Bush gang.
When major decisions of policy are being debated, don’t get drawn into a discussion about intelligence, whether it’s “good” or not, and what it supposedly shows. It’s irrelevant with regard to the decision to go to war. The decision to invade Iraq was made long before the intelligence was “fixed” — and the intelligence was fixed to rationalize a decision that had already been made, and it was used as the propaganda to justify the invasion to the American public and to the world.
The press is in thrall to the powerful, and to government in general. If you oppose the administration’s policies, the press is not your friend. It is the government’s friend, and it does the government’s bidding. If you want to find out the truth as fully as you can, look outside the mainstream press. With extremely rare exceptions, mainstream media outlets largely transmit government propaganda. They may question it at the edges, but the main story the government wants told will be faithfully transmitted.
Above all, I think we must never forget that the government and its many allies always seek to seduce us into playing their game. They want us to, because it’s their game. They know they’ll win it in the end. So don’t play their game at all.
Take the debate onto your own field. Play your game by your own rules, and use your own terms. And then we can beat the bastards.
UPDATE–OH FOR THREE: My grateful thanks to the alert reader who reminds me of Frank Rich’s column from almost a year ago, dated August 14, 2005. (It’s available here.) I remember that column very well for Rich’s major contention: that “the war in Iraq is over.” Rich meant that most domestic political support for the war had evaporated — but he very significantly minimized the carnage that would still occur before we finally got the hell out (if we ever do completely, which appears unlikely in the extreme). It was after the point that perceptive observers knew the utter futility and destructiveness (including self-destructiveness) of our humiliation in Vietnam that the worst horrors of that war occurred — and this is precisely the course we appear determined to repeat again in Iraq.
In that earlier piece, Rich also commits the intelligence error before all the world, and he does so in an especially obvious fashion. Rich discusses Bush’s critical speech of October 7, 2002, and refers to Bush’s justifications for the coming war as “a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype.” Rich mentions the supposed ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and the fears that Saddam “could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.” And then he writes:
It was on these false premises – that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America – that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight.
Rich is impliedly contending that the decision to go to war was based on the intelligence. This is Bush‘s argument, and Bush’s own defense. It turned out the intelligence was wrong; sorry, and all that. But the decision was still based on the intelligence, at least in significant part.
That’s entirely false. It’s all a lie, but Rich (as well as almost all other mainstream commentators) is unaccountably reluctant to make that charge explicitly. The Bush administration made the decision first — and then invented, stovepiped, distorted and misrepresented the case for war to sell it to America, and to the world. As I recently wrote: “”The interested parties have wanted to invade Iraq and rearrange the Middle East since the calamitous presidency of George W. Bush was merely a glint in Karl Rove’s malignant eye, and even before that.” The decision to invade Iraq was made long before the phony “intelligence” case was offered to the public. And 9/11 was the tragic excuse used for a plan that had been around a very long time.
I was certain Rich had made this error as well, simply because almost everyone makes it. It’s the way the debate is always conducted. And that’s why the administration continues to get away with its criminal plans — and why we remain on track for Our Date with Armageddon.
| Ava Lowery on CNN Ava Lowery on CNN
The interviewer was pretty jerky, but please focus on her courage in the face of the insane ridicule this young girl has endured since she spoke out against the war. Gina, who ran Yearly Kos has a diary up about Ava…Go check it out! |
Tom Friedman's Flexible Deadlines
Iraq's 'decisive' six months have lasted two and a half years
5/16/06
New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman is considered by many of his media colleagues to be one of the wisest observers of international affairs. "You have a global brain, my friend," MSNBC host Chris Matthews once told Friedman (4/21/05). "You're amazing. You amaze me every time you write a book."
Such praise is not uncommon. Friedman's appeal seems to rest on his ability to discuss complex issues in the simplest possible terms. On a recent episode of MSNBC's Hardball (5/11/06), for example, Friedman boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline: "Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
That confident prediction would seem a lot more insightful, however, if Friedman hadn't been making essentially the same forecast almost since the beginning of the Iraq War. A review of Friedman's punditry reveals a long series of similar do-or-die dates that never seem to get any closer.
"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(New York Times, 11/30/03)
"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
(NPR's Fresh Air, 6/3/04)
"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)
"Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile."
(New York Times, 11/28/04)
"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."
(NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)
"Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time."
(New York Times, 9/28/05)
"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 12/18/05)
"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it."
(PBS's Charlie Rose Show, 12/20/05)
"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."
(New York Times, 12/21/05)
"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand."
(Oprah Winfrey Show, 1/23/06)
"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out."
(CBS, 1/31/06)
"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq."
(NBC's Today, 3/2/06)
"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us."
(CNN, 4/23/06)
"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)
*Corrected version 5/17/06
See FAIR's Archives for more on:
New York Times
Iraq
War and Militarism
almostinfamous | April 26, 2006 at 10:38 PM
I do see a difference between Wolfowitz and Cheney, and therefore similarly between Berman/Geras and some of the assclown warbloggers who changed the logic of their argument for Iraq every five seconds.
In many ways, it's one of those differences that makes no difference, and it's not as if most of the "reasonable, decent" prowar people have all meaningfully rethought their support–as long as they continue to say, "Well, I had a moral point, and it was just the Bush Administration screwing it up", they still really don't get even a half-credit for reasonableness. Because the screwing-it-up part was in fact one of the things that many reasonable critics were observing was wrong about the war, that to go to war under the wrong circumstances at the wrong time with the wrong leadership in the wrong way with a wrong plan IS MORALLY WRONG. You can't say, "Well, I have a moral principle about this war which trumps the innumerable bad premises" any more than you can be only partially pregnant. You go to war in the wrong way, you've got a wrong war.
But I wouldn't want that point to obscure substantively different intellectual and institutional histories that informed different parts of the support for the war. The landscape that George Packer picks through carefully, for example, matters at various points both for understanding the war and for understanding its aftermath or consequences. Even for understanding how to oppose it politically. But it doesn't cancel out that people who were wrong, were fucking wrong, and that most of them, especially the reasonable, decent sorts, still lack the decency to cop to the totality of their wrongness. Which makes their claim of decency sort of silly on its face.
The Independent
The farcical end of the American dream
The US press is supposed to be challenging the lies of this war
By Robert Fisk
03/18/06 "The Independent"–It is a bright winter morning and I am sipping
my first coffee of the day in Los Angeles. My eye moves like a radar beam
over the front page of the Los Angeles Times for the word that dominates the
minds of all Middle East correspondents: Iraq. In post-invasion, post-Judith
Miller mode, the American press is supposed to be challenging the lies of
this war. So the story beneath the headline "In a Battle of Wits, Iraq's
Insurgency Mastermind Stays a Step Ahead of US" deserves to be read. Or does
it?
Datelined Washington – an odd city in which to learn about Iraq, you might
think – its opening paragraph reads: "Despite the recent arrest of one of
his would-be suicide bombers in Jordan and some top aides in Iraq,
insurgency mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi has eluded capture, US authorities
say, because his network has a much better intelligence-gathering operation
than they do."
Now quite apart from the fact that many Iraqis – along, I have to admit,
with myself – have grave doubts about whether Zarqawi exists, and that
al-Qai'da's Zarqawi, if he does exist, does not merit the title of
"insurgency mastermind", the words that caught my eye were "US authorities
say". And as I read through the report, I note how the Los Angeles Times
sources this extraordinary tale. I thought American reporters no longer
trusted the US administration, not after the mythical weapons of mass
destruction and the equally mythical connections between Saddam and the
international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001. Of course, I was
wrong.
Here are the sources – on pages one and 10 for the yarn spun by reporters
Josh Meyer and Mark Mazzetti: "US officials said", "said one US Justice
Department counter-terrorism official", "Officials … said", "those
officials said", "the officials confirmed", "American officials complained",
"the US officials stressed", "US authorities believe", "said one senior US
intelligence official", "US officials said", "Jordanian officials … said"
– here, at least is some light relief – "several US officials said", "the US
officials said", "American officials said", "officials say", "say US
officials", "US officials said", "one US counter-terrorism official said".
I do truly treasure this story. It proves my point that the Los Angeles
Times – along with the big east coast dailies – should all be called US
OFFICIALS SAY. But it's not just this fawning on political power that makes
me despair. Let's move to a more recent example of what I can only call
institutionalised racism in American reporting of Iraq. I have to thank
reader Andrew Gorman for this gem, a January Associated Press report about
the killing of an Iraqi prisoner under interrogation by US Chief Warrant
Officer Lewis Welshofer Jnr.
Mr Welshofer, it transpired in court, had stuffed the Iraqi General Abed
Hamed Mowhoush head-first into a sleeping bag and sat on his chest, an
action which – not surprisingly – caused the general to expire. The military
jury ordered – reader, hold your breath – a reprimand for Mr Welshofer, the
forfeiting of $6,000 of his salary and confinement to barracks for 60 days.
But what caught my eye was the sympathetic detail. Welshofer's wife's
Barbara, the AP told us, "testified that she was worried about providing for
their three children if her husband was sentenced to prison. 'I love him
more for fighting this,' she said, tears welling up in her eyes. 'He's
always said that you need to do the right thing, and sometimes the right
thing is the hardest thing to do'".
Yes, I guess torture is tough on the torturer. But try this from the same
report: "Earlier in the day … Mr Welshofer fought back tears. 'I deeply
apologise if my actions tarnish the soldiers serving in Iraq,' he said."
Note how the American killer's remorse is directed not towards his helpless
and dead victim but to the honour of his fellow soldiers, even though an
earlier hearing had revealed that some of his colleagues watched Welshofer
stuffing the general into the sleeping bag and did nothing to stop him. An
earlier AP report stated that "officials" – here we go again – "believed
Mowhoush had information that would 'break the back of the insurgency'."
Wow. The general knew all about 40,000 Iraqi insurgents. So what a good idea
to stuff him upside down inside a sleeping bag and sit on his chest.
But the real scandal about these reports is we're not told anything about
the general's family. Didn't he have a wife? I imagine the tears were
"welling up in her eyes" when she was told her husband had been done to
death. Didn't the general have children? Or parents? Or any loved ones who
"fought back tears" when told of this vile deed? Not in the AP report he
didn't. General Mowhoush comes across as an object, a dehumanised creature
who wouldn't let the Americans "break the back" of the insurgency after
being stuffed headfirst into a sleeping bag.
Now let's praise the AP. On an equally bright summer's morning in Australia
a few days ago I open the Sydney Morning Herald. It tells me, on page six,
that the news agency, using the Freedom of Information Act, has forced US
authorities to turn over 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at the
Guantanamo Bay prison camp. One of them records the trial of since-released
British prisoner Feroz Abbasi, in which Mr Abbasi vainly pleads with his
judge, a US air force colonel, to reveal the evidence against him, something
he says he has a right to hear under international law.
And here is what the American colonel replied: "Mr Abbasi, your conduct is
unacceptable and this is your absolute final warning. I do not care about
international law. I do not want to hear the words international law. We are
not concerned about international law."
Alas, these words – which symbolise the very end of the American dream – are
buried down the story. The colonel, clearly a disgrace to the uniform he
wears, does not appear in the bland headline ("US papers tell Guantanamo
inmates' stories") of the Sydney paper, more interested in telling us that
the released documents identify by name the "farmers, shopkeepers or
goatherds" held in Guantanamo.
I am now in Wellington, New Zealand, watching on CNN Saddam Hussein's attack
on the Baghdad court trying him. And suddenly, the ghastly Saddam disappears
from my screen. The hearing will now proceed in secret, turning this
drumhead court into even more of a farce. It is a disgrace. And what does
CNN respectfully tell us? That the judge has "suspended media coverage"!
If only, I say to myself, CNN – along with the American press – would do the
same.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Think Again: Mr. Fitzgerald'’s Unanswered Questions
by Eric Alterman
November 3, 2005
According to this week's Newsweek, the nation enjoyed two historic moments last Friday. The first was special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference outlining his perjury case against "Cheney's Cheney," I(rve) Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The second – occurring simultaneously – was that "in the small dining room adjoining the Oval Office, [President Bush] was doing something uncharacteristic: watching live news on TV." Apparently, the president only watched the first 20 minutes or so of the press conference, but for a guy who famously avoids both print and broadcast news, any small step toward engagement with the "reality-based community" may be a giant step for mankind.
Alas, Fitzgerald's press conference proved a disappointment to many, in part owing to the attending reporters’ inability to ask him questions he might be likely to answer. Fitzgerald repeatedly declined to speculate about where his ongoing investigation might lead, and made clear early on that he wouldn't discuss certain topics, but numerous reporters appeared more intent on creating sound bites than in garnering whatever information might be available, and instead, inspired repeat after repeat of the special prosecutor’s non-response.
Since Fitzgerald has said he has no intention of issuing a final report about this complicated matter, it remains the responsibility of the reporters themselves to fill in the many holes he left in the story. Americans still need to know just what kind of conspiracy was launched here – not merely to attack the credibility of Joe Wilson and blow the cover off his CIA agent wife, but also to fool the nation into going to war. Here are just a few of them:
Where’s Dick?
As The Washington Post’s Bart Gellman reported in his excellent exegesis of the known story so far, "Libby and Cheney made separate inquiries to the CIA about Wilson's wife, and each confirmed independently that she worked there. It was Cheney, the indictment states, who supplied Libby the detail ‘that Wilson's wife worked . . . in the Counterproliferation Division’ – an unambiguous declaration that her position was among the case officers of the operations directorate." The question we still need to ask is, "Do we know the extent of Cheney's involvement in his subordinate's decision to leak classified information and lie about it to a Grand Jury?" We know part of the answer from the indictment itself, and as Josh Marshall pointed out, "Libby had consulted with Cheney about how to handle inquiries from journalists about the vice president's role in sending Wilson to Africa in early 2002."
What's more, on the now-infamous July 12, 2003 Air Force Two flight from Washington to Norfolk, Virginia, according to the indictment, "LIBBY discussed with other officials aboard the plane what LIBBY should say in response to certain pending media inquiries, including questions from Time reporter Matthew Cooper." Who, exactly, are these "other officials?" Is one of them the vice president? As Gellman wrote in the Post, on that flight "the vice president instructed his aide to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on Wilson's credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source." The question we need to answer is: What else did Cheney "instruct his aide" to do? And are any of these actions indictable? Has Anybody Pled Guilty?
Another thing we still don't know is if anyone pled guilty in the case. As TNR's Ryan Lizza reported over the weekend, he asked Fitzgerald's spokesman Randall Samborn just that question. Samborn partially dodged the question, telling Lizza that there was no "public record" of any pleas. Not satisfied, Lizza put the question to "a white collar criminal defense attorney," who told him that "Guilty pleas can be taken under seal – and often are – when the person entering the plea is cooperating with the government and they do not want to tip off the other targets or there is a safety concern. Also, plea agreements could have already been reached but not formally entered in court." Where’s Phase II?
All this was wrought, in the end, by the administration's use of faulty intelligence to justify its invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In a bit of crystal ball gazing this past Sunday, Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times about the Senate Intelligence Committee's failure to issue the "Phase II" section of its report on the administration's use of that intelligence, calling it a "scandal in its own right." It is, although it has largely been ignored until Murray Waas reported in The National Journal last week that Cheney and Libby were refusing to hand over to the committee certain documents, which included "the Libby-written passages in early drafts of Colin Powell's notorious presentation of W.M.D. ‘evidence’ to the U.N. on the eve of war." As we know, Harry Reid threw this in the face of the nation on Tuesday, when he invoked Rule 21 and forced Senate Republicans to agree to form a bipartisan committee to find out why we haven't seen this "Phase II" report.
Where’s Novak?
Enough said.
Will we ever have fully satisfactory answers to questions that initially inspired the Fitzgerald investigation, as well as those it has raised in its wake? Likely not. But if reporters and news organizations decide to invest the time and money in trying to find the answers to these and other key questions, they might at least make a start at making amends to their readers, viewers and listeners for accepting administration claims at face value in the first place, and allowing the nation to be led by lies into war.
Just one request to Bill Keller and the folks at the Times, however: Could you please keep Judy Miller off the story? She’s done her part….
Eric Alterman is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of six books, including most recently, When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences, just published in paperback by Penguin.
www.americanprogress.org
From the Los Angeles Times
Moussaoui Case Is Latest Misstep in Prosecutions
'There have been a lot of flubs,' a law professor says of the U.S. record in terrorism trials.
By David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writers
March 14, 2006
WASHINGTON — The botched handling of witnesses in the sentencing trial of Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui is the latest in a series of missteps and false starts that have beset the Bush administration's prosecution of terrorism cases.
The government has seen juries reject high-profile terrorism charges, judges throw out convictions because of mistakes by the prosecution and the FBI suffer the embarrassment of wrongly accusing an Oregon lawyer of participating in the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
"There have been a lot of flubs," said George Washington University law professor Stephen A. Saltzburg. "I think most observers would say they were underwhelmed by the prosecutions brought so far."
On several occasions, top administration officials have promised more than they delivered. For example, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft announced in 2002 that Jose Padilla, a Bronx-born Muslim, had been arrested on suspicion of "exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States."
Padilla was held nearly four years in a military brig without being charged. This year, as his lawyers appealed his case to the Supreme Court, the administration indicted him in Miami on charges of conspiring to aid terrorists abroad. There was no mention of a "dirty bomb."
In May 2004, the FBI arrested Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer and Muslim convert, saying that his fingerprint was on a bag containing detonators and explosives linked to the Madrid train bombings that had killed 191 people two months before. The former Army officer was held as a material witness even though officials in Spain considered the fingerprint evidence inconclusive.
Mayfield was freed after almost three weeks in custody and received an apology from the FBI, which blamed the misidentification on a substandard digital image from Spanish authorities.
In other instances, prosecutors took cases to court that proved to be weak:
• A computer science student in Idaho was accused of aiding terrorists when he designed a website that included information on terrorists in Chechnya and Israel. A jury in Boise acquitted Sami Omar Al-Hussayen of the charges in June 2004.
• A Florida college professor was indicted on charges of supporting terrorists by promoting the cause of Palestinian groups. A jury in Tampa acquitted Sami Al-Arian in December.
• Two Detroit men arrested a week after the Sept. 11 attacks were believed to be plotting a terrorist incident, in part based on sketches found in their apartment. A judge overturned the convictions of Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi after he learned that the prosecutor's key witness had admitted lying to the FBI, a fact the prosecutor had kept hidden.
David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who has been critical of such prosecutions, blamed pressure from the top. "The government in the war on terrorism has generally swept broadly and put a high premium on convictions at any cost," he said. "That puts pressures on prosecutors — to overcharge, to coach witnesses, to fail to disclose exculpatory evidence."
But Andrew McBride, a former federal prosecutor in Virginia, said it was unfair to blame prosecutors for the apparent witness tampering in the Moussaoui case.
"You can't really lay this at the door of the prosecution," he said. "This is a lawyer at the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] who screwed up. The rule of witnesses is pretty well known. You would think she would know you are not supposed to discuss the earlier testimony with your witnesses."
In a recent report on its terrorism prosecutions, the Justice Department called Moussaoui's decision last year to plead guilty to conspiracy charges one of its leading successes.
But U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema already has questioned whether the French citizen deserves the death penalty; Moussaoui was in jail in Minnesota on a visa violation when hijackers seized four passenger jets and caused almost 3,000 deaths by crashing them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. the Supreme Court has said the death penalty should be reserved for murderers and "major participants" in murder plots. Prosecutors are pushing for the death penalty under the theory that Moussaoui could have prevented the terrorist attacks by telling the FBI about the plot.
Terrorism cases have proved to be especially difficult for prosecutors because investigators need to disrupt plots before they come to fruition. That leaves prosecutors to make a decision on whether to bring a thin case to court. By contrast, in drug cases, police and drug agents can track suspects and arrest them when they take possession of large quantities of narcotics.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, officials feared there were terrorist "sleeper cells" throughout the nation, ready to spring into action. Since then, the determined pursuit of Al Qaeda members and sympathizers has turned up relatively few terrorists.
"The good news may be that there are not as many threatening people out there as we once thought," law professor Saltzburg said.
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Fri Mar 3, 12:07 PM ET
The Nation — Cheaters never win, my mom said. And it looks like she was right.
This week the fur flew when senior associate editor Nick Sylvester was suspended from his gig at the Village Voice. Turns out the boy wonder/music critic had fabricated reporting for his cover story "Do You Wanna Kiss Me?" on the pick-up artist's guide The Game by Neil Strauss. (You might remember Strauss from other literary merits such as ghost-writing porn star Jenna Jameson's memoir.)
The story's been pulled from the site, but it's not really worth reading, anyway. It's a pretty thin piece of trend-reporting that doesn't hold much water. Basically, Sylvester interviews a few women who have read The Game and can use it against the would-be players who try to pick them up. He then attempts to extrapolate that into something–it's not clear what–about the state of dating in New York. He interviews Strauss and uncritically swallows a lot of his garbage about picking up women–for one, he fails to be very critical of the whole "art" of picking up women at all, let alone Strauss's basic assumption that social success is measured by belt notches.
Given how flimsy the journalism is, one can't help but wonder why the whole piece wasn't cast as a short diary from a woman's perspective–but wait, guess what? Dolly, a New Yorker who writes a blog about her love life, and had recognized men running The Game on her, did pitch the Voice, in January, and never heard back. Then Sylvester was assigned the story.
Golden boy Sylvester has nothing to worry about. "I just adore that kid," acting Voice Editor Doug Simmons told Gawker . "The thought of firing him is a painful one for me. I hope this review can bring an understanding to the paper — and to Nick — about the boundaries of journalism."
Yes, cause the boundaries of journalism were so unclear before. Thank goodness Simmons cleared that one up!
What happened here doesn't quite add up. First, Sylvester's lie was painfully obvious, violating the cardinal rule of fake journalism: Don't quote real people who you've never met. (Make them up!) And stranger still is why he bothered with lying at all. He claims to have met one especially colorful pick-up artist at Bar 151 in New York, but in fact the scene he related was a "composite" of anecdotes told to him by others. So why lie? Why not just quote the people you interviewed in real-life?
Usually Sylvester writes pretentious, garbled, mumbo-jumbo name-dropping music reviews, and some have speculated that the poor kid just got in over his head. It was a Jayson Blair-esque case of too much, too soon. But even that doesn't make sense. It doesn't take genius to know that you don't make up facts in a reported story. Sylvester, who was yanked from the stage at this year's Plug Awards for reading Malcom Gladwell's New Yorker essay on profiling in lieu of presenting the award he was there to give, seems to have a problem with taking anything seriously. Maybe he thought the Voice piece was supposed to be a prank. For now, the joke's on him. He's not only been suspended from the Voice, but yesterday he was fired from his gig as an editor at indie rock go-to site Pitchfork .
But the really outrage-inducing part of all this is that Sylvester won't be up at night sweating out the difference between "fact" and "fiction" in our topsy-turvy, no-holds-barred post-modern world where right is left and up is down. He's more famous than he was before, and in the long-run, his career will be just fine. He has Simmons. He's young. He'll still get a book deal.
Rich Galen is on our Top Ten Douchebags In D.C. http://www.mullings.com/
Air America Continues Flight With Flagship WLIB NY
WLIB New York will continue to be the New York home of Air America Radio, under an agreement announced by Air America and Inner City Broadcasting. The companies report that over the next several months, Air America and Inner City will seek to enhance and extend their long-term relationship.
“We are happy to reiterate that our New York listeners will be able to continue to hear our programming,” said Air America Radio CEO Danny Goldberg.
“Inner City has always had faith in the mission of Air America,” said Vice Chairman of ICBC Broadcasting Holdings, Inc. Skip Finley.
Google Storage:
http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/6173/Google_to_Offer_Online_Storage
http://meteor-blades.dailykos.com/
Meteor Blades's diary :: ::
I'm clueless as to how many of those could qualify as political. Not to mention how many of those would call themselves progressive or politically left. Nor how many frequently have something worth reading, something original, inspiring, revelatory or investigatory. Thousands, for sure.
For someone as obsessed as me, it's maddening. Speed-reading can only get you so far. But it's simultaneously wonderful. For an antique journalist and Op-Ed junkie like myself, what could be more liberating than this plethora?
Liberating and essential. We've got Guckertgate, Plamegate, Torturegate, Coingate and Spygate. We've got corruption and incompetence and unconstitutionality spread from sea to shining sea. We've got a foreign policy that makes Manifest Destiny look altruistic. With mercenaries, propagandists and lily-livered chicken-hearts dominating the megamedia, how could we have put so many pieces together without the blogs?
Not that a few good journalists haven't alerted us to a smidgen of what's going on. But, until recently, supine has been the usual position in which we've found our supposedly watchdog media. Worse still in the opinion sections. Worst of all on television. Anyone who has wanted something other than the same old talking points, something more than the same shy obeisance to an Administration out of control, something even close to a reading between the lines, has turned to blogs.
On the Op-Ed pages of the old Los Angeles Herald Examiner, I used to buy maybe 50 "citizen" pieces a year and fill the rest with the same, publisher-approved, mostly sad collection of syndicated columnists that the rest of America's newspapers published. At the Los Angeles Times, we maybe managed to get 250 citizen pieces onto the Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion pages each year, and filled the rest with syndicated writers.
For 11 years before it was absorbed by Tribune Media Services, I contributed to this narrow little world of pre-packaged opinion as editor at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, where a staff of salespeople worked to cram 21 political columnists – including Cal Thomas, Arianna Huffington, Robert Reno, Henry Kissinger, Jesse Jackson, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Press and Armstrong Williams – into as many of the nation's 1,500 daily newspapers as possible. Foreign sales were big, too.
Three major syndicates and a handful of minor ones still run their own stables of political columnists. Ultimately, with 125 or so syndicated columnists available, about 10 dominate the dead-tree media. Right or left, they're treated like commodities. Check out the TMS page. You need a liberal or a libertarian on your Op-Ed? Just click on the mini-window.
You can depend on almost every one of these columnists never to break the formula. Never too long. Never too colorful. Definitely nothing to upset the brand. They're sold as a conservative, they'd damn sure better stay one, or they'll wind up pissing off client editors the way Huffington did when she started making her move from right to left. Predictability is essential.
Which is why I love political blogs. Unpredictable. Fresh. Unique. The standard Op-Ed is 700 words per entry. If it suits a blogger, s/he'll write 7,000 words. Or 70, plus a link to somebody's else's 7,000 words. Or a 7-word caption on a picture . Or just the picture with a comment thread so you can write your own caption. Rant, rave, rumination, reminiscence, reflection, review, rehash, research, reverie, revolt – there are simply no limits to form or style or substance. The political blogger can create a smackdown that is pure poetry, as well as exposés, dot-connections or raw speculation. S/he can write a diatribe or a dissertation. Or serve as focal point for activism. Nobody can tell the blogger what to say, what conclusions to draw. No editor is on the phone suggesting the latest effort be toned down or started over. Of course, this free-for-all means some wild-ass nonsense gets posted. And a few typos.
It also means an abundance so rich that if you're at all like me, you can't even keep up with the names of all the new progressive blogs, much less their substance. Happily, each year at this time, the folks over at Wampum help us all out by hosting the Koufax Awards.
The fifteen year old girl from Alabama that has received almost as many death threats as I have for making “
The New York Herald Sun 